


It's the End of the World

by CuriosityRedux



Series: Dragon Drabbles AU's [4]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Hiccstrid - Freeform, zombie apocalypse AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 21:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16751908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuriosityRedux/pseuds/CuriosityRedux
Summary: Hiccup and Astrid try to play nice during a zombie apocalypse.





	It's the End of the World

**It's the End of the World**

**-**

Astrid’s slap cracked hard against Hiccup’s cheek, making his eyes water and his ears ring. 

“What the f–  _What was that for?_ ” He recoiled instantly from the injured girl, fingertips probing the hot, stinging skin.

She glared up at him, pushing up on her elbow. “Don’t you  _dare_  pull some ‘last man and woman on earth’ shit!” Her pointed finger of accusation was sharp. “Keep your  _hands_ to  _yourself_!”

“I will if you get  _over_  yourself,” he snapped, giving her side a gentle push. Sure enough, she hissed and cringed at the light pressure. “I was trying to check and see if your ribs were broken.”

“You don’t have to  _grope_ me to check me,” she bit back, though he could tell by her expression that his explanation had taken her by surprise. She really  _wasn’t_  used to people looking out for her. He wondered how long it’d been since she’d traveled with somebody she trusted. “It’s my ribs that are busted, not my tits.”

“So ladylike,” Hiccup muttered under his breath. Searching the inside of his cheek with his tongue, he made sure his teeth hadn’t cut into the soft flesh before drawing his hand away. He went back to Astrid’s side, brushing away her shielding arm, and felt gently at the bones. Sure enough, he detected the break immediately. “Yeah. At least one, if not two. We’ll have to camp here for a few days.”

Her glower, if anything, only intensified. “I’m fine. We don’t have to stop just because some Chippy got a lucky shot in.”

Hiccup sat back on his heels and gave her a flat look. “Fine. Go ahead. Get your pack, let’s go." 

Astrid sneered. Carefully sitting up, she twisted to her hands and knees with just a single quiet swear. Then she slowly made her way to her hands and feet, still reaching to her left side. When she reached for her bow and her half-spilled bag, though, the weight was too much. She cried out a phrase that would make his father blush and dropped the pack immediately.

"Fine.” Cutting the dead body between them a fiery glance, she jerked her chin in the opposite direction. “Let’s put some distance behind us first, though. I don’t want to sleep next to Cyborg McGee.”

“For the thousandth time, they’re not cyborgs,” Hiccup sighed. But he stood and picked up her pack himself, slinging it over his shoulder. He tried to wrap his arm around her, to let her lean on him while they walked, but she wouldn’t have it. So they moved in a vaguely eastern direction, too slow for his liking and too full of concerned questions for Astrid’s.

Eventually they did set up camp inside an abandoned convenience store. It’d been stripped of any useful supplies, but it had a safe room where they could hole up. He laid out her pallet for her, despite her annoyed protests. Then he turned on the ChipDar and sat leaning against the open station door to wait for Toothless. 

“One day that stupid cat is gonna get shot and eaten,” Astrid called over to him from inside the safe. “I would’ve eaten him myself if I were you.”

Hiccup didn’t give into her taunting, staring out at the setting sun. He let the constant beep from the ChipDar soothe his nerves. “That’s because food is more important to you than companionship. I personally would rather die sane than live like you.”

“I live just  _fine_ , thank you.” He heard her soft grunts of pain as she shrugged out of her jacket and boots. “Don’t forget, if it wasn’t for  _my_  way of life, you  _and_  your cat would be dead already.”

“Yeah, and don’t forget that  _I'm_ the one who knows the way to Berk.” Hiccup folded his arms across his chest and lifted his fingers back to his cheek. He wondered absently if it would bruise, or if he was currently sporting a bright red handprint across his face. He wasn’t one for vanity– Gods, he couldn’t even remember the last time he  _saw_  his reflection in anything but an abandoned car’s sideview mirror– but he didn’t want to go around looking like the pervert Astrid thought he was.  _  
_

That made her go quiet. Talk of the little east coast town always did. No matter how much of a bravado she put up, no matter how much she bragged about her self reliance, he knew Astrid Hofferson needed to feel safe again. Needed a home again. Berk was one of the few mythical safe havens left, and he just happened to know exactly where to find it.

He  _had_  to find it. Hiccup flicked his gaze to the device beeping at his side. The ChipDar would mean an entirely new brand of safety for his father and his town. He’d just finished it before Chippies found his underground workshop and ran him out. Those mindless bodies that used to be humans. The ChipDar could pick up the same frequencies that the microchips used to control their brains and detect them from just short of twenty miles away. With some tweaking, he hoped to extend the range to over a hundred miles before he and Astrid reached Berk. 

“Have you heard about their leader?” she asked after a few minutes. The sound of rustling fabric reached his ears as she settled into her pallet. “Stoick?”

Oh yeah. He really should get around to telling her about that.

“Yeah,” Hiccup answered with a nervous cough. “Why?”

“I heard his tests are really hard,” she sighed. “I heard he’s turned away actual people because they couldn’t pass his Chippy tests.”

He snorted. Leave it to his father to take his hostile paranoia out on innocent people. That’s why the ChipDar was so important. That’s why he’d been working on it before he and his dad lost contact with each other. “What– worried about not being human enough to get in?”

Her moment of cold silence was frigid. “I won’t need to be human enough. Your fancy radar’s going to get me in, right?”

“Right." 

She was silent for the rest of the night. After an hour or so, Toothless came trotting in, and Hiccup was able to lock them inside. When he returned to the safe, Astrid was fast asleep on the floor. She snored. She hadn’t in the beginning– when he’d first met the girl with her killer aim and her foul mouth. She’d slept light as a feather then, waking at even the faintest noises. Now she was zonked out, one arm stretched across her torso, the other flung over her eyes. Her mouth hung open. A pretty sleeper, she was not. 

Before he set up his own sleeping bag, he knelt over her side and gently pushed her hand away. Then he carefully lifted her torn and dusty t-shirt just enough to inspect the damage done to her ribs. It reminded him of a vet giving a wild animal a sedative before inspecting its wounds.

That’s what she seemed like. A wild animal, vicious and dangerous. Ever since the moment she’d shot down the trio of Chippies that had him and Toothless cornered, Hiccup had been aware that Astrid was more adjusted to post-apocalyptic survival than he was.

"Hiccup Haddock,” he’d stammered while she yanked her arrows out of the still-twitching corpses. She wiped them off on her frayed jeans before shoving them back in her pack. “Half physicist. Half inventor. One hundred percent really really glad you showed up when you did.”

“Astrid. Hofferson.” She’d looked him up and down like one might look at a chihuahua that claimed to be a doberman. “Part fitness instructor, part police academy trainee, one hundred percent really confused as to how you’re still alive.”

And she hadn’t gotten any sweeter since.

She had a soft side. He knew that by the way she would talk about what her retired-cop-dad-turned-Chippy used to teach her about shooting and surviving in the wild. Or by the way she asked an impossible number of questions about Berk– what was it like there? Was it mostly townspeople or mostly evacuees? Did he think it was more like a community or was it more like the rest of the country– barren and war-torn? He heard her whimper in her nightmares sometimes. 

But for the most part she was all about surviving. And if Hiccup wasn’t keeping up with her rigorous pace, her insane sleep schedule, her deadly fighting skills, he was in the way. Which meant he was  _always_ in the way. 

So maybe he shouldn’t care so much that her ribs were already turning a lovely shade of black. But she was snoring over the beeping ChipDar, and she’d left her bow leaning against the wall. That  _meant_ something. That she trusted him. That she could feel safe around him– as safe as they ever were. She snapped at him and bugged him about Toothless sharing their food and was always accusing him of inappropriate advances, but the bow against the wall told him more than she ever said out loud. 

So he smoothed her shirt back down. Turned up the volume on the ChipDar and slid into his own pallet. He’d splint up her ribs in the morning, after they’d gotten some rest. Then they’d figure out the next thousand miles to Berk. One step at a time.


End file.
